“Most people have experiences beyond the five senses, but they have nobody to talk to,” said Lansdale resident Connie Bell-Dixon, who leads a Lansdale/Philly Psychic Development meetup.com group whose meetings include monthly gatherings at the Lansdale Public Library.

“As a child, I had visions and pre-cognitive dreams, which is a dream about a future event,” said Bell-Dixon, who started researching how to control her psychic energies when she was 19. She said she knew she had to do something when she was visited by the spirit of a friend who had died in a car accident.

Bell-Dixon says when she was 11, she had a vision of a movie star’s death that came true, but declined to say who the movie star was.

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Through her studies, she found that everyone has some type of psychic ability. For example, have you ever been thinking about somebody, then the phone rings, and it’s that very person?

“It’s a similar type of ability as mathematics,” said Bell-Dixon, who explained that people have varying levels of interest, education and mastery when it comes to math.

The purpose of the psychic development group, Bell-Dixon said, is to help people consciously open up their energies “to understand life, to help others and maybe just continue on a spiritual path.”

The first half of the Lansdale Public Library meetings she described as a “meet and greet.” The second half is dedicated to some metaphysical element, such as telepathy, reiki, crystals, angels, auras, chakras, reincarnation, meditation, psychometry (detecting positive or negative energy from objects), or using pendulums to access the subconscious mind. January’s meeting topic was “spirituality’s place — or not — in psychic development.”

“If they’re smart, you’ll try them all because you never know what your talents are,” Bell-Dixon said.

“The number one thing I talk about is every person has the ability to accept or reject what I say. I’m into meeting people who are into using their energies in a positive way. It’s fascinating to see people grow.”

The group has more than 430 members on meetup.com and the next meeting is at 1 p.m. Feb. 9. Cost is $5 and you must RSVP via meetup.com.

A less broad, but nonetheless metaphysical, group that has met monthly at Lansdale Public Library for the last year and a half is the Philly Tarot Card Readers, which next meets at 11 a.m. Feb. 2.

The group, which has 120 members, is led by Cliessa Nagle of the Mystic Magick metaphysical healing center on Walnut Street in Lansdale and Randi Bieba, who owned the former Crystal Persuasion shop in Skippack.

“You don’t go to get your cards read,” Nagle said, “you learn to be a reader.”

The 78-card Tarot deck, which dates back to the 15th century, features mystic pictures that can be traced back to the Kabbalah, and Egyptian, Celtic, Roman, Greek and European mythology. Depending how the cards are drawn — there are 6,000 possible combinations, according to Nagle — they are said to spark the reader’s intuition to help with resolving dilemmas and offering insight into one’s personal future.

“It depends on what the reading is for,” Nagle said. “Every card has a certain meaning. A Tarot card doesn’t stand on its own, it stands in relationship to the other cards. They tell the reader a story. Within six months people should be able to do a basic reading.”

Nagle acknowledged that the cards get a bad rap because of an association with the occult. “It’s not evil. There are no sinister connections at all,” she said. “To be a good reader, you need to have a deeply spiritual element.”

The February meeting topic will be getting physically and spiritually prepared to do a reading.